In a Game of Rugby, One of the Phases of the Game that is particularly dangerous is the scrum. This phase of the game demands a high individual and collective technical expertise, together with an excellent physical condition for the scrum participants. Indeed, the injuries occurring during this phase of the game can be very serious, in particular for the right prop and the hooker owing to the forces that come into play and to their position in the scrum.
In the practice of rugby, in order to train technically and physically for the scrum, the players have static equipment available comprising for example a head yoke, for three people, allowing a first row of opponents to be simulated notably by its function as an end stop. However, this equipment does not allow the players to be prepared to undergo strong displacement forces such as those developed for example during a non-regulation forward push of the opposing pack, when a scrum collapses. Moreover, these types of equipment are not active and can only reproduce, at the most, the energy supplied and stored by the players.
This type of missing aspect in the training of a player makes him all the more vulnerable during matches given that he must handle unusual forces that are not reproduced in training for fear of injuries.
Amongst the existing training systems, a first device is described in the patent application FR2892941. The first device is a training apparatus for rugby players that can perform a measurement of forces produced by said rugby players. The first device comprises a scrum yoke, mounted onto a base unit resting on the ground. The base unit and the yoke can effect a translation under the effect of the thrusting of the players on the yoke. In addition, the yoke is mounted so as to be mobile on the base unit in order to have a degree of freedom in rotation about a substantially vertical axis.
A second device described in the patent application FR 2861313 describes an apparatus designed for the muscular or technical preparation of an individual. The second device comprises a machine designed to be set on the ground, support means against which the two shoulders of the person under training can rest and linking means between the support means and the machine, said linking means allowing a translational movement along a substantially horizontal axis of the support means with respect to the machine. In addition, the linking means allow a degree of rotation for the support means about a substantially horizontal axis.
The existing training systems can only therefore produce two degrees of freedom, one degree in translation and one degree in rotation about a vertical axis. These devices are therefore not very well adapted to a precise and tactical training such as is demanded by the high level of the current game of rugby.
Moreover, the existing systems have jerky and abrupt movements that can even be dangerous for the players, due to the use of pneumatic actuators or tensioning systems. Moreover, some of these systems, only used in laboratories, do not correspond to the CE directives on safety, CE being a French acronym for “Conformité Européenne” [European Conformity].